Agence France-Presse,
MUNICH, Germany: US Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned Sunday that failing to stamp out Afghanistan's resurgent Taliban would boost Islamic extremism worldwide and urged Europeans to wake up to the risks.
“Instability and conflict abroad have the potential to spread and strike directly at the hearts of our nations,” Gates said in a speech to the annual Munich Conference on Security Policy.
“But I am concerned that many people on this continent may not comprehend the magnitude of the direct threat to European security,” he told the forum — a traditional venue for Washington to flag concerns to European allies.
“For the United States, September 11 was a galvanizing event — one that opened the American public's eyes to dangers from distant lands.”
Afghanistan's Islamic-extremist Taliban, who had provided safe haven to Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, were ousted from power in 2001 by a US-led invasion in the wake of the suicide hijack-plane attacks on the United States.
But international forces and the Afghan army have been confronted by a renewed Taliban insurgency, notably in the south of the country which has seen heavy fighting for months.
Gates warned that success for the Taliban would be a huge morale boost for Islamic extremism worldwide, and said a reticent European public should remember this.
“The threat posed by violent Islamic extremism is real — and it is not going away,” he said.
Europeans knew “all too well” about the Madrid bombings that killed 191 people in March 2004 and the attacks in London that left 56 dead in July 2005, he said, but further from the spotlight there had been “multiple smaller attacks” in cities from Glasgow to Istanbul.
“Numerous cells and plots have been disrupted in recent years as well — many of them seeking large-scale death and destruction.”
Gates said loosely organised international Islamic extremism was “built on the illusion of success.”
“After all, about the only thing they have accomplished recently is the death of thousands of innocent Muslims while trying to create discord across the Middle East. So far they have failed.
“What would happen if the false success they proclaim became real success? If they triumphed in Iraq or Afghanistan, or managed to topple the government of Pakistan? Or a major Middle Eastern government?”
The task confronting the US and Europe is to fracture and destroy Islamic extremism and deflate its ideology, and that the best opportunity to do that is in Afghanistan, he said.
Gates has been pressing his message over recent days in Europe, notably at talks in Lithuania with fellow defence ministers from the 26-nation NATO, where he sought to convince European allies to send reinforcements to Afghanistan.
NATO's UN-mandated International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan has grown from 16,000 to 43,000 troops — around one-third of them American and one-fifth British — within the space of two years, but commanders have been calling for more soldiers.
“We are not losing. We are just not winning fast enough,” noted supreme NATO commander, US General Bantz Craddock, on the sidelines of the conference.
“We are short on boots on the ground…. I am convinced that if we had what we need we would see more progress,” he added, putting ISAF's requirements at “three battalions”, or around 1,500-3,000 troops.
With the public in many European countries increasingly against involvement, many governments are wary of unpopular new deployments, particularly in the volatile south.
“We must not — we cannot — become a two-tiered alliance of those who are willing to fight and those who are not,” warned Gates.
Questioned on recent strong remarks that riled several NATO allies, notably Germany, which with 3,200 soldiers deployed in relatively stable northern Afghanistan provides ISAF's third-largest contingent, Gates was diplomatic.
“I haven't singled out a single ountry. No individual country has failed to fulfill its commitments,” he said.
